Austin Butler’s Take on His Elvis Accent May Trigger Suspicious Minds

Austin Butler may prefer a little less conversation about his Elvis accent, but fans aren’t done talking about it yet.

The actor, who recently picked up an Oscar nomination for his role of Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann‘s film, is responding to the continuing buzz over his lingering accent.

“It’s funny to me because I don’t even think about it,” he said about the attention around his accent in a Los Angeles Times interview published Jan. 24. “I guess after three years of doing everything that I could to focus on this one goal of trying to bring life to Elvis in this film, I think that there’s certain muscular habits that must pop up. If I was trying to sound like Elvis, I would sound very different right now.” 

Still, Butler doesn’t take all the chatter too seriously. 

“I think it’s sort of amusing to me how much people want to focus on this one thing,” he continued. “But I’ve had friends who’ve gone and lived in other countries and they come back and they have a French accent or an Italian accent or something like that, or where they’ve gone and lived in the South for a while and they’ve come back. It’s funny how we have these muscular habits that will pop up in ways that we don’t expect.”